a geologist bakes

Lemon and Coconut Cookies

These are stupid fecking biscuits. They do taste pretty nice though and that’s why they’re allowed in but only make them if you have a fair wedge of time at your disposal and a love for washing up.

I attempted them to sort out my mountain of desiccated coconut and icing sugar and my mountain has been reduced but I’m certain there’d be simpler ways. I think I’ll give old school Irish macaroons a go next time.

I stole this recipe (and adapted it slightly because I amn’t mad about using cup measurements) from from a very beautiful site called ‘Will cook for smiles’ which is wonderfully cheery and chocked full of brilliant photos and no doubt, when she makes these cookies her kitchen doesn’t end up like mine.

It also made tons, about 30.

Anyway, off we go.

Oven temperature 180 Celsius

Caster sugar 200g

Cream cheese 80g

Zest of 1 lemon

Melted butter 225g

Egg 1

Milk 1 tablespoon

Lemon juice 1 tablespoon

Plain flour 400g

Baking soda 1/2 teaspoon

Baking powder 1 teaspoon

Salt 1/2 teaspoon

Desiccated coconut 80g

Icing sugar a shag load – about 100g

Preheat your oven and line a few baking trays with baking parchment.

Put the caster sugar, cream cheese, lemon zest and butter into a large mixing bowl and beat well to combine.

There aren’t many photos because I was too busy destroying my kitchen.

Add in the egg, milk and juice and beat some more.

Finally add in the flour, soda, baking powder, salt and coconut and mix everything together to form a fairly sticky dough.

This is where everything started going a little arseways for me.

Get a dinner plate and pour the icing sugar onto it and rub some more icing sugar on your palms.

Scoop up very small golf ball sized lumps of cookie mix with your hands, roll into balls and toss them in the icing sugar.

Place them onto the baking trays leaving quite a lot of room between them, I made mine in batches with only about 5 cookies on any tray.

I said about 5

Continue rolling them, dusting your hands with sugar and swearing till you’ve used up all the batter or have given up and realised you can buy lovely biscuits very readily at the nearest shop.

Bake for 10 – 12mins till they start to go pale brown. Leave them to cool completely on the trays before removing them and eating them all because you damn well deserve to.